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August 10, 2025
 

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COMMENTARY
Jun 6, 2004
Slow down the warehousing of the old
By Tom Plate
LOS ANGELES -- In Asia, though not everywhere in the region, older people tend to be regarded differently from their counterparts in America. In many places, they're not even spurned. In some, they are even revered. Imagine.
EDITORIALS
Jun 5, 2004
Haze of perpetual highway debt
The Diet has approved controversial legislation for privatizing the nation's deficit-ridden highway system. The need for privatization is widely recognized, yet doubts remain about the ways and means of achieving it. The fundamental question is whether the new system will really serve the purpose of...
COMMENTARY
Jun 5, 2004
Filipino politicians just don't like to lose
By Ronald Meinardus
MANILA -- For the international media, the Philippine elections are a done deal, since the head of the Commission on Elections in an all but orthodox manner unofficially let it be known that President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo beat her main contender, ex-movie star Fernando Poe Jr., by more than 900,000...
COMMENTARY
Jun 5, 2004
Badawi: A kinder Mahathir?
By Ralph Cossa
KUALA LUMPUR -- Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi is proving to be a kinder, gentler, but no less candid, thoughtful and thought-provoking version of his mercurial predecessor.
EDITORIALS
Jun 4, 2004
Bumpy road ahead for Kanebo
Kanebo Ltd., once an icon of Japanese industry, faces a grim future as it begins to restructure under the direction of a government-run corporate bailout agency. The cosmetics business is already in the hands of a new independent company owned by the agency. The latest revival plan, unveiled earlier...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 4, 2004
Seoul's labor moves could destroy jobs
By Christopher Lingle
LUXEMBOURG -- Democracy everywhere increasingly involves politicians seeking short-run gains for themselves and small interest-groups while imposing large costs on most of the population. This trend toward cynical, zero-sum games is most evident in South Korea when it comes to the labor market. It is...
COMMENTARY
Jun 4, 2004
A celebration and reckoning
By Andre Fontaine
PARIS -- The European Union should figure heavily in the headlines this month. To start with, U.S. President George W. Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, French President Jacques Chirac, Russian President Vladimir Putin and many other heads of states, including German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder,...
EDITORIALS
Jun 3, 2004
Copyright ethics for the digital age
As a result of rapid advances in the digitization and networking of information, the environment surrounding copyrights is undergoing dramatic change. Unfortunately, understanding of copyrights in Japan is far from adequate. Culture won't be nurtured unless the ethics exist in which the beneficiaries...
COMMENTARY
Jun 3, 2004
1-2 punch to modern health
By Hugh Cortazzi
LONDON -- In the "bad old days," tuberculosis and epidemics of infectious diseases were the main killers. In advanced societies today, the No. 1 killers are cardiovascular problems and various forms of cancer. Some of these diseases can be traced to hereditary causes, but lifestyle and environment are...
EDITORIALS
Jun 2, 2004
Striking a balance in Geneva
The World Trade Organization opens three days of farm trade talks in Geneva on Wednesday. Japan, which maintains high tariffs on rice and other sensitive products, is likely to find itself on the defensive, as it did in previous talks. But maintaining a rigid policy of protection is not a sensible option....
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 2, 2004
China threatens Hong Kong's freedoms
By Kevin Rafferty
When China resumed sovereignty over Hong Kong in 1997 after 150 years of British rule, the "one country, two systems" formula for this special administrative region of China promised that Beijing would leave Hong Kong's free-wheeling capitalist way of life untouched for at least 50 years.
EDITORIALS
Jun 1, 2004
An 'environmental revolution'
A revolution means a radical change. That's exactly what the government's latest environment report calls for. It stresses the importance of building a new socio-economic society through environmental conservation -- a society in which "environment-friendly" technologies are broadly blended with the...
U.S. backtracks on Japan tariff calculation, taking effective rate lower
Ryosei Akazawa, Japan's chief tariff negotiator, said the U.S. made a clerical error in not including a “reciprocal” tariff rate ceiling for Japan in the trade deal.
Japan's inheritance tax is high, unforgiving and sometimes avoidable
The National Tax Agency at the Ministry of Finance, Kasumigaseki, Tokyo. Japanese tax authorities can bill foreign residents in Japan for assets inherited globally.
Japan starts survey on foreign nationals' unpaid resident taxes
In the most recent regular session of parliament, problems were highlighted regarding some foreign workers leaving Japan without paying outstanding taxes.
How Pakistan shot down India's cutting-edge fighter using Chinese gear
An Indian Air Force pilot gets out of a Rafale fighter jet during its induction ceremony at an air force station in Ambala, India, September 2020.
The horrors of Nagasaki, in first person
Koichi Tagawa’s diary entry from Aug. 9, 1945, describes the day of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.
Cheer with caution: Expert advises sports fans have game plan for extreme heat
A Cardinals fan fans himself during the seventh inning of a game against the Pirates in St. Louis, Missouri, in June 2022.
Australia's warship selection signals Japanese defense industry's arrival
The Maritime Self-Defense Force's Mogami-class frigate. Australia's selection of an upgraded version of the Mogami-class warship for its next frigate class could prove to be a watershed moment for Japan’s defense industry.
Japan's inheritance tax is high, unforgiving and sometimes avoidable
The National Tax Agency at the Ministry of Finance, Kasumigaseki, Tokyo. Japanese tax authorities can bill foreign residents in Japan for assets inherited globally.
Will the movement seeking Ishiba’s resignation succeed?
Liberal Democratic Party youth division head Yasutaka Nakasone (center) and other members speak to reporters in Tokyo on July 25.
Photographer Bleg Bayraktar is winning social media with politeness
A video on Bayraktar's Instagram account of the Belgian photographer approaching an elderly worker in Tokyo's Shibuya has gone viral, garnering almost 9 million views.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

Koichi Tagawa’s diary entry from Aug. 9, 1945, describes the day of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.
The horrors of Nagasaki, in first person
By Naoko Abe

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